Het Achterhuis: Dagboakbrieven van 12 Jun 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944. Met een woord vooraf door Annie Romein-Verschoor. [The Diary of Anne Frank].

FRANK, Anne .

$12,500.00

Item Number: 96773

Amsterdam: Contact, 1947.

First edition of the diary of Anne Frank in the original Dutch. Small octavo, original publisher’s white and red paper-covered boards, illustrated with 2 photographic reproductions of the interior of the house, 1 floor plan, and 2 facsimiles from the diary. Introduction by Annie Romein-Verschoor. Very good in the dust jacket which is in very good condition with some professional restoration and tape repairs to the verso, with the second issue in blue. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Exceedingly rare and desirable, especially in the original dust jacket.

Anne began her new diary on her 13th birthday, June 12, 1942, by writing, “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” (Page 1 bears a facsimile of this entry.) Only a month later, Anne and her family would go into hiding. Anne envisioned the future publication of her diary—in fact, she began editing the text before the family’s arrest on August 4, 1944 (three days after the diary’s last entry)—and chose the title Het Achterhuis (The House Behind) herself. After its initial release, the book was translated and published in more than 60 languages. Upon its publication in English, Eleanor Roosevelt called the diary “one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war.” It remains one of the most widely read books in the world. “Anne Frank’s diary is too tenderly intimate a book to be frozen with the label ‘classic,’ and yet no lesser designation serves” (Books of the Century, 180).